Nathan Field
Nathan Field (baptized 17 October 1587 - 1620) was an English playwright and actor. Life Overview Field was one of "the children of the Queen's Revels," who performed in Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels in 1600. He wrote A Woman's a Weathercock (1612), Amends for Ladies (1618), and (with Massinger) The Fatal Dowry (1632).John William Cousin, "Field, Nathaniel," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910, 137. Web, Jan. 12, 2018. Youth Field was born in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, the son of Rev. John Field (buried 26 March 1587-8), author of A Godly Exhortation by occasion of the late Iudgement of God shewed at Paris Garden 13 Jan. 1583, a violent attack upon theatrical entertainments. Another brother was Theophilus Field, who became bishop of Hereford.Knight, 408. He was baptized 17 October 1587 under the name Nathan; not to be confused with an elder brother, registered 13 June 1581 as Nathaniel Field, who became a printer.R. Florence Brinkley, "Nathan and Nathaniel Field," Modern Language Notes, 42:1 (January 1927), 10-15. JStor, Web, Jan. 12, 2018. Nat. Field, as he was generally called, Sal. Pavy, Thomas Day, John Underwood, Robert Baxter, and John Frost were the 6 principal comedians of the Children of the Queen's Revels, as the children of the Chapel Royal were at one time called, by whom in 1600 Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels was performed. Field acted in the following year in the Poetaster of the same author.Knight, 409. Actor His 1st recorded part is Chapman's Bussy d'Ambois (published 1607). In 1609 he played in Jonson's Epicene. In Jonson's Bartholomew Fair (1614) (act v. sc. 3) Cokes asks, concerning the performers in a puppet-show, "Which is your best actor, your Field?" and pays Field a still higher compliment in connecting him with Burbage. Richard Flecknoe, 50 years later, confirms this association, saying in the "Short Discourse of the English Stage," printed at the end of his Love's Kingdom (1664): :In this time were poets and actors in their greatest flourish; Jonson and Shakespeare, with Beaumont and Fletcher, their poets, and Field and Burbage their actors. Malone, who doubts whether the actor and the dramatist are the same, says that Field played Bussy d'Ambois "when he became too manly to represent the characters of women’ (Supplement to Malone's Shakespeare), a supposition which Collier, with some show of reason, rebuts. At some period after 1614, Collier thinks 1616, Field, who seems to have been with the king's players in 1613, permanently joined them, playing with Burbage in The Knight of Malta and other plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. His name appears for the 1st time in 1619 in a patent, and stands 17th on the list of 26 players, prefixed as "The Names of the Principall Actors in all these Playes" to the 1623 folio Shakespeare.. According to the registers of the parishes of St. Anne, Blackfriars, and St. Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, several children of Nathan Field and Anne Field, his wife, were christened from 1619 to 1627. The burial of Field himself, who is believed to have retired from the stage somewhere near 1623, appears in the same registers under the date 20 Feb. 1632–3. Field's married life seems to have been disturbed by jealousy. Among the Heber MSS. is an epigram, quoted in Collier's Annals of the Stage, iii. 437, calling him the true "Othello" for his jealousy of his wife. Playwright Field's first appearance as a dramatist was made with his ‘A Woman is a Weather-cock,’ 4to, 1612, which, according to the title, was "acted before the king at Whitehall, and divers times privately at the Whitefriars by the children of Her Majesty's Revels." This was followed by Amends for Ladies, 4to, 1618 and 1639. The performance of the latter play could not have been much later than 1610, since in 1611 an allusion to it is found in a work of Anthony Stafford (Collier, Annals of the Stage, iii. 104). It was acted at the Blackfriars theatre, "when it was employed by the actors of Prince Henry and of the Princess Elizabeth, as well as by the king's players" (ib. iii. 429). That Field played in his own pieces is probable but uncertain. Writing These plays, 1 of which, as a satire upon women, was dedicated "to any woman that hath been no weathercock," i.e. to nobody, while the 2nd, as its title implies, was intended as a species of apology for the former, are included in Collier's and in W.C. Hazlitt's editions of Dodsley's Old Plays. They are excellent comedies in their class. The comic scenes are above the level of Massinger and Shirley, and the serious passages need not shame those poets. The relative shares of Field and Massinger in The Fatal Dowry, 4to, 1632, published under their joint names, have not been conclusively established. That A Woman's a Weathercock and Amends for Ladies were written about the same time seems proved by Field's dedication of the earlier work, in which, after saying that he cares not for 40 shillings — supposed to be the ordinary price for a dedication, words which have been held to establish that his finances were at that time flourishing — he urges his imaginary patroness to remain constant "till my next play be printed, wherein she shall see what amends I have made to her and all the sex." Field's share in a tripartite appeal, his partners in which were Massinger and Daborne, to Henslowe, preserved in Dulwich College, puts, however, a different aspect upon Field's financial position. It is an earnest appeal for 5 out of 10 pounds said to be owing for a play, without which they "cannot be bayled." A second document, at Dulwich, shows Field "unluckily taken on an execution of 30l." and begging from his "Father Hinchlow," (Henslowe) for a loan of xl., which with xl. lent by a friend, will procure his discharge. At Dulwich are also a 3rd letter to ‘Hinchlow’ concerning a play on which "Mr. Dawborne" and himself "have spent a great deale of time in conference, some articles concerning a company of players," and a portrait of Field "in his shirt," a portion of the Cartwright bequest preserved in the master's house, and showing Field with a youthful and feminine face. Under the initials N.F. in a later edition, filled out, Field contributed 6 stanzas in praise of Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, prefixed to the 1st edition of that play. Before his own 1st play appear 10 lines by George Chapman, addressed "To his loved son, Nat. Field, and his Weathercock Woman." A joke concerning "Master Field, the player," preserved in subsequent jest-books, appears in the Wit and Mirth of Taylor, the Water Poet. A punning epigram entitled "Field, the Player, on his Mistress, the Lady May," is found in a manuscript in the Ashmolean Museum, and in other commonplace books of the reign of James I and Charles I (Collier, Annals of the Stage, iii. 434).Knight, 410. Recognition In popular culture Susan Cooper's King of Shadows features Nathan Field as a character, but is a work of fiction. It is set in 1599, and uses Field's background as a student of Richard Mulcaster's at St. Paul's as a springboard. The Nathan Field in the story who briefly works at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre is actually a like-named boy from 1999, who has switched places with the young Elizabethan actor. He is starring in the book King of Shadows (Nat Field). See also * List of English-language playwrights References *Brinkley, Roberta F. Nathan Field: The actor-playwright. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1928. * . Wikisource, Web, Jan, 12, 2018. Notes External links ;About *Field in the Encyclopaedia Britannica * Nathan Field at Globe-Theatre.org.uk * Field, Nathaniel Category:1587 births Category:1620 deaths Category:English Renaissance dramatists Category:17th-century actors Category:16th-century English people Category:17th-century English people Category:People of the Tudor period